What programming language ruby, python og javascript?

diy@sh.itjust.works to Programming@programming.dev – 32 points –

I'm looking for a programming language that can help me build a desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux that's not big but not small either. Additionally, I'd like to be able to build a website with the same language. I've been considering Ruby, Python, Golang and JavaScript. Python seems to be mainly used for scripting and ai, so I'm not sure if it's the best fit. JavaScript has a lot of negative opinions surrounding it, while Ruby sounds interesting. Can anyone recommend a language that meets my requirements?

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You can count Ruby out immediately. Terrible language.

Also replace JavaScript with Typescript. It's strictly superior.

I don't think Go has any mature GUI libraries.

For desktop GUI your main options are:

  • Qt, via C++. Probably the best option but if you don't know C++ that's a huge barrier.
  • Qt, via Python. Reasonable but Python is quite a shit language. It's very slow and the tooling/infrastructure is absolutely abysmal. Be prepared to bang your head against the wall trying to e.g. get relative imports to work.
  • Dart/Flutter. This is quite nice but not super mature for desktop apps. Also the Dart ecosystem is very small so libraries you want may not be available.
  • Electron/Typescript. This is quite a good option. Nobody here will recommend this because nerds have a slightly weird hatred of Electron because the minimum download size is like 80MB. But normally it doesn't really matter. Especially for big apps.

For the web frontend you basically want Typescript. For the backend you can use literally any language.

I would recommend Electron for the GUI and Typescript for the web frontend and Electron GUI. It means you can use the same language everywhere and you won't need to even implement the same program twice.

If you're worried about the download size / RAM usage you can look into Tauri which uses your OS's browser engine. I've never used it though.

Regarding tauri: One and a half years ago I looked into it as a potential alternative to using electron.

Back then I had to decide against it for my use case, because when the goal is that it's a cross platform app, then one has to make sure that whatever "webview version" is used on all target OS, they all have to support the features one needs re one's own app codebase. Back then I needed some "offscreen canvas" feature that chromium supported (hence electron), but which webkit2gtk (used on Linux) didn't at the time.

https://tauri.app/v1/references/webview-versions/

So it's not always easy to give a clear recommendation on using tauri over electron. One really has to get somewhat clear on what kind of "webview requirements" the resp. app will have.

But I do hope this will (or maybe already is) less of an issue in upcoming years (things are moving fast after all).

You can count Ruby out immediately. Terrible language.

wow.

Ever tried to follow a large Ruby codebase like Gitlab? Absolutely nightmare. Not only does it not have type annotations, so you can't follow code by clicking, but you can't even follow it by grepping because Rubyists seem to love generated identifiers. Even the syntax of the language makes grepping worse, e.g. the lack of brackets prevents you from grepping for function calls like foo(.

You’re talking about rails. That’s like saying Kotlin is a terrible language because your only exposure to it is with something that decided to use Glassfish Webfly Swarm and Camel.

type annotations

You can literally follow code perfectly fine in an IDE like RubyMine. It actually works much better than Python because Ruby is incredibly consistent in its language design, while Python is an absolute mess (same with JS. Try opening a large Python or JS project in PyCharm or WebStorm).

No clue what you’re talking about with grepping though. Use an IDE like I said and you can literally just “Find all usages” or “Jump to declaration”, etc.

In any case, you shouldn’t be using any of these for large projects like gitlab, so it’s completely inconsequential. Saying something like “Java is terrible, have you ever used it for a CLI? It’s so slow it’s impossible to do anything!” is idiotic because of course it is. That’s not what it’s built for. Ruby is a scripting language. Use it for scripting. It kicks Python’s ass for many reasons, JS is terrible for scripting, and while you can use something like bash or rust, the situation is incredibly painful for both.

None of this has absolutely anything to do with the language design. You’re talking about language design and equating it to being terrible and then saying it’s because you don’t use any sort of tools to actually make it work.

You’re talking about rails.

Maybe other Ruby code is better, but people always say Rails is the killer app of Ruby so...

Use an IDE like I said and you can literally just “Find all usages” or “Jump to declaration”, etc.

That only works if you have static type annotations, which seems to be very rare in the Ruby world.

In any case, you shouldn’t be using any of these for large projects like gitlab, so it’s completely inconsequential.

Well, I agree you shouldn't use Ruby for large projects like Gitlab. But why use it for anything?

Maybe other Ruby code is better, but people always say Rails is the killer app of Ruby so…

I've literally never heard anyone say that...

That only works if you have static type annotations, which seems to be very rare in the Ruby world.

no. it literally works for any ruby code in any project. you do not need static type annotations at all. I can tell you've literally never even tried this...

Well, I agree you shouldn’t use Ruby for large projects like Gitlab. But why use it for anything?

because it's a fantastic scripting language with a runtime that is available on almost every platform on the planet by default (yes most linux distributions include it, compared to something like python which is hardly ever included and if it is it's 2.x instead of 3.x). It's also much more readable than bash, python, javascript, etc. so writing a readable (and runnable everywhere) script is dead simple. Writing CLIs with it is also dead simple, while I think Python has a few better libraries for this like Click, Ruby is much more portable than Python (this isn't my opinion, this is experience from shipping both ruby and python clis for years).

I’ve literally never heard anyone say that

Well you didn't listen then. Google the phrase.

I can tell you’ve literally never even tried this…

I do not need to try it to know that this is fundamental impossible. But I will try it because you can go some way towards proper type knowledge without explicit annotations (e.g. Pycharm can do this for Python) and it's better than nothing (but still not as good as actual type annotations).

It’s also much more readable than bash, python, javascript, etc. so writing a readable (and runnable everywhere)

Bash definitely. Not sure I'd agree for Python though. That's extremely readable.

Jump to declarations or usages has absolutely nothing to do with types so I have no clue why you think type annotations to make jump to useful.

Oh really? How would an IDE go-to-definition on x.bar in this code?

def foo(x):
  return x.bar

Best it can do is heuristics and guesswork.

By using the AST? Do you really not know how languages work? I mean seriously, this is incredibly basic stuff. You don’t need to know the type to jump to the ast node location. Do you think that formatters for dynamic languages need to know the type in order to format them properly? Then why in the world would you need it to know where to jump to in a type definition!?!

Edit: also in the case of Ruby, the entire thing runs on a VM which used to be YARV but I think might have changed recently. So there’s literally bytecode providing all the information needed to run it. I highly recommend reading a book about how the Ruby internals work since you seem to think you understand but it’s quite clear you don’t, or for some reason think “jump to” is this magical thing that requires types.

I think you're getting a bit confused. How do you know where x's type is defined and therefore where x.bar is defined if you don't know what type x is? It's literally impossible. Best you can do is global type inference but that has very big limitations and is not really feasible in a language that wasn't designed for it.

Do you think that formatters for dynamic languages need to know the type in order to format them properly? Then why in the world would you need it to know where to jump to in a type definition!?!

Not sure if that is a serious question, but it's because formatting doesn't depend on the type of variables but going to the definition of a field obviously depends on the type that the field is in.

Maybe my example was not clear enough for you - I guess it's possible you've never experienced working intellisense, so you don't understand the feature I'm describing.

class A:
  bar: int

class B:
  bar: str

def foo(x):
  return x.bar

Ctrl-click on bar. Where does it jump to?

Not sure if that is a serious question, but it’s because formatting doesn’t depend on the type of variables but going to the definition of a field obviously depends on the type that the field is in.

formatting does depend on the type of variables. Go look at ktfmt's codebase and come back after you've done so...

Maybe my example was not clear enough for you - I guess it’s possible you’ve never experienced working intellisense, so you don’t understand the feature I’m describing.

Lol, nice try with the insult there. I code in Kotlin, my intellisense works just fine. I just think you're quite ignorant and have no clue what you're actually talking about.

Ctrl-click on bar. Where does it jump to?

it gives you an option, just like if it was an interface. Did you actually try this out before commenting? Guessing not. And how often are you naming functions the exact same thing across two different classes without using an interface? And if you were using an interface intellisense would work the exact same way, giving you the option to jump to any of the implementations.

I'm sorry, but you clearly haven't thought this out, or you're really quite ignorant as to how intellisense works in all languages (including Ruby, and including statically typed languages).

formatting does depend on the type of variables. Go look at ktfmt’s codebase and come back after you’ve done so…

I skimmed it. It appears to visit the AST of the code and format that, as any formatter does. ASTs have not been type checked.

Can you give an example?

it gives you an option, just like if it was an interface. Did you actually try this out before commenting?

Precisely! It doesn't know the answer so it has to guess, or make you guess.

And how often are you naming functions the exact same thing across two different classes without using an interface?

You mean how often does the same field name come up more than once? All the time obviously! Think about common names like id, size, begin, children, etc. etc.

I’m sorry, but you clearly haven’t thought this out, or you’re really quite ignorant as to how intellisense works in all languages (including Ruby, and including statically typed languages).

I'm sorry but you clearly haven't thought this through, or you're just happy to ignore the limitations of Ruby. I suspect the latter. Please don't pretend they aren't limitations though. It's ok to say "yes this isn't very good but I like Ruby anyway".